Climate Science Glossary

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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Unaccustomed to being strong-armed by their own administrators, some government scientists reacted with what former US Climate Change Science Program senior associate Rick Piltz called “an anticipatory kind of self-censorship.” As a result, the Bush Administration’s efforts to smother scientific findings concerning global warming in government reports were remarkably effective.

However, the Trump Administration is quickly realizing that scientists learned from the Bush scandal. This time around they’re not trying to appease the political appointees by staying quiet and allowing the censorship to happen.

Nevertheless, the Trump Administration ignored those warning signs and continued to follow the Bush climate science censorship playbook. It hasn’t worked.

Reacting to the deletion of some National Parks Service tweets of climate change facts, a number of “resistance” Twitter accounts ostensibly run by government scientists have been created. Most recently, the Trump Administration had ordered that the EPA delete its climate webpage, but again in the face of public and media outrage has retreated.

This time around, government scientists have been quick to blow the whistle against political censorship of science, either by contacting congressional offices or journalists. Whistleblowers can contact Guardian journalists securely and anonymously by following these instructions.

Scientists are right to feel threatened

It’s possible that reactions to these Trump Administration moves are overblown - that they’re simply the result of a clumsy transition period and weren’t meant to signal a permanent censorship of science. But Trump has given scientists every reason to feel threatened.